


don't get me wrong

by orangesparks



Category: Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-21 23:11:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13154001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangesparks/pseuds/orangesparks
Summary: "C'mon. Spill.""Spill what? There's nothing to spill. Why are you suddenly talking like we're in an Afterschool Special about teen pregnancy?"(Or: Jeanie and Sloane take a week off.)





	don't get me wrong

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LovelyPoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyPoet/gifts).



It isn't until seventh grade that Ferris really starts doing the polka twist on Jeanie's last nerve.

"That's your brother?" Sloane asks.

Jeanie pauses from her rummaging of the fridge and snorts. _Brother_ isn't really a good word to describe Ferris. Something like _unhealing scab_ would work much better.

"Unfortunately."

Sloane holds a box of peanut butter crackers in her hands, toying with the cardboard flap with a look of contemplation, and it's probably overdramatic to think it at this stage, but Jeanie can already see that she's lost her. Maybe not right this minute - Sloane's a good student, she won't mess around, she wants a decent grade on this project just as much as Jeanie does. But it's in the appraisement in her eyes every time Ferris, _the dork_ , struts back and forth past the kitchen, any forced casualness to his movements spoiled by the fact that he's passed them at least a _million_ times in the past five minutes.

"You ladies need any help in there? I've been told I'm quite the Han Solo of fridge-raiding, y'know. Tell me what to find, I'll dive in headfirst, no questions asked. I got the mustard on my Chucks to prove it."

A quiet cough tells her that Sloane is trying not to laugh.

Jeanie finally locates the jar of strawberry jam, camouflaged behind three half-empty ketchup bottles, and scowls.

By the time Ferris is through, they don't get much work done.

A call on their father's business line is enough to distract Jeanie for a good four minutes until she figures out that her dad's head cold hasn't worsened, but it's actually that creep friend of her brother's on the other line.

"You're not funny," she snarls, and then, just to be mean, "and your voice sounds like _shit_."

By the time she makes her way back to the kitchen, her brother has Sloane cornered. (And somehow, years later, even after witnessing firsthand such a display of resplendent idiocy: she even agrees to _date_ him.)

Things stay like that, this Tom and Jerry-esque battles of wills (if Tom and Jerry ever fought over the universal remote or the keys to Dad's Buick), ebbing and flowing before abruptly ending towards the end of her junior year.

Because here's the thing Jeanie learns, the night that she gives Ed Rooney permanent testicle damage and saves Ferris's skinny (but grateful) hide: in all the years she thought he was making her life hell, she was doing a damn good job dishing it back.

 

-

 

The colored overhead lights in the record store are dimmed, a smoky blur of blue, purple, red. It feels like wading through a haze of simmering Fourth of July sparklers.

Sloane leisurely sifts through tapes in the bargain rack. The Pretenders, New Order, and the Stray Cats blare through crumbling speakers, all at once, all at volumes which Jeanie's certain will contribute to many a future hearing problem.

Sloane's okay, as far as anyone formerly dating her brother can be considered (sibling truce or no, the memory of catching the two of them playing tonsil hockey when her parents weren't home and Ferris didn't bother closing his door still makes Jeanie want to ralph directly onto the carpet).

She's also pretty okay as a fellow human female, too.

"What's the guy's name?" she asks, casually. Jeanie almost drops the Pat Benatar record she's holding.

"Huh?"

"C'mon. Spill."

"Spill what? There's nothing to spill. Why are you suddenly talking like we're in an Afterschool Special about teen pregnancy?"

Sloane laughs, softly. "I didn't mean to upset you. I just thought you had something going, is all."

 _Something going_. There's a phrase that's loaded in more than one way.

Most guys are terrified of Jeanie. For the majority of her school career, this hadn't bothered her; hell, she'd even prided herself on it. She had more important things to do.

A certain afternoon in a police station had changed things.

Garth Volbeck had been something else, all right; a teenage drug-dealer whose inventory was wider than that of your casual pharmacist. And yeah, when he'd laid that tired smile on Jeanie and acted like she was someone worth listening to instead of someone to be avoided - she'd melted.

She'd seen him for a little while after - Ferris himself had landed them reservations at some ritzy French place that Jeanie could never afford, insisting that it was all on the Frohman account (she'd learned never to question her brother when it came to certain peculiarities like this; it was best to just go with it). And they'd kissed a few more times, and, yeah, maybe they'd done even more.

But something was missing. Jeanie knew it, and Garth clearly did, too, though he was too kind to say so. It was cowardly, maybe, but she was relieved when the problem seemingly vanished months later when he'd somehow managed to graduate with her brother (something she'd also credit to Ferris, if it weren't for Garth himself expressing uncharacteristic glee after learning his shop grades were enough to pull up his average).

"No," Jeanie says, and puts Ms. Benatar back on the shelf before she can drop her again. "Nothing going." She hopes she doesn't sound too sour.

"Well," Sloane says (and why the hell is she _smiling?_ ), "as it happens: the same goes for me."

 

-

 

Sloane's loaded the backseat of her clinky little Miata with: three suitcases, five grocery bags, two folded beach chairs, one cooler. A fuschia cassette tote reclines on the seat rest between them.

("Where are we going?" Jeanie had asked suspiciously, when Sloane practically dragged her out of the record store. The other girl had only smiled, enigmatic as ever, not giving anything up until Jeanie found herself back at home with instructions to pack whatever she'd need for a week within the next forty minutes.)

Jeanie's sunglasses collection is up to twenty-two, including one pair from childhood that doesn't fit anymore, and four broken pairs she can't bear to part with. Today, she wears her favorite '40s inspired ones, round tortoiseshell frames around dusky lenses. When she smiles, they make her look almost as smug as Ferris.

Almost.

"Seriously, though. Where are we going?"

"The road will let us know when we get there."

Jesus. That stupid freshman poetry course that Ferris has been taking must have somehow infected Sloane, too.

"Farmland, then," says Jeanie. "Yippee."

Sloane slowly looks at her over the rims of her own sunglasses, then, a sleek pair of white cat-eyes, and Jeanie feels for the first time a sense of unease. It's not that she doesn't trust Sloane, but there can be no other explanation for the sudden fluttery feeling riding shotgun in her gut.

Jeanie still doesn't know exactly what went down with Ferris and Sloane's break-up. Distance had been her first guess - college is enough to tear anyone apart, and NYU isn't exactly down the road - but somehow, she knows that a little thing like distance wouldn't be enough to deter Ferris from getting what he wanted.

She doesn't think it would be enough to deter Sloane, either.

"Hold tight," says Sloane, and they whip out of the cul-de-sac fast enough to make NASA jealous.

 

-

 

They're flopped out, boneless, on the scratchy floral bedspreads in Motel Room Number One (there will be five, total, once it's all said and done) when Sloane asks:

"Why didn't it work out?"

At first, Jeanie thinks Sloane's talking about herself - and what the hell is Jeanie supposed to be, some _psychologist_ , some expert on the lunatic ways of her brother? - until she realizes it's a question directed firmly at _her_.

"I don't know," she says, slowly.

Sloane rakes in a soft inhale, her chest rising and falling rapidly in her oversized Shermer sweatshirt.

"Yeah. Same for me."

Jeanie doesn't want to hear this.

Eyeing the bottle of of Bartles & James sitting nearly full next to her feet, she grabs it and takes a long gulp. They'd bribed the half-bored, half-amused salesgirl at the last 7-11 into selling them three four-packs by slipping her a crumpled twenty. (Not as elegant a scheme as one of her brother's, maybe, but effective nonetheless.)

The watermelon taste is sickly-sweet, just this side of truly disgusting. She takes another sip.

She knows, of course, that Sloane and her brother had been going for quite some time. She knows, also, that the several months or so they've been broken up constitute a decade in teenager years. But if the other girl brought her on this insane impromptu summer road trip just so she could wax poetic about her _brother_ \--

"Actually," says Sloane. "That's a lie."

She sits up on the bed, suddenly, swinging her legs over the side, toned and tan and endless in the black track shorts she's wearing as pajama bottoms.

"Oh?" asks Jeanie. It comes out as a croak. She blames the shitty sugar-alcohol. Sloane doesn't notice, or at least is polite enough to not mention it.

"Yeah." The other girl is frowning, now; not at Jeanie, but more to herself. She bites at her lip, worrying it, before fixing her with a sudden fierce stare. "I _love_ your brother," she insists, and Jeanie is about to plug her ears with her manicure and shout-sing every lyric she can remember from that Go-Go's tape they played non-stop in the car, until Sloane continues, almost shame-faced, "He's one of my best friends, you know? But... I don't know if I was in love with him. And what really sucks is that I can't figure out why."

(Genteel, sloe-eyed Sloane Peterson saying the word _sucks_ with such vehemence is the first of many things that will surprise Jeanie on this trip.)

Maybe it's selfish, but Jeanie doesn't like seeing her like this - not just because they've become kind-of-sort-of-friends over the course of senior year, and not just because she's not a complete sadist who finds joy in the suffering of others (unless, of course, said person's name is Edward Rooney), but because there's something unsettling about always cool always calm always composed _Sloane_ getting so unwound from a mere three bottles of alcoholic sugar water.

"Well, I can't help with that. _But_ ," Jeanie ventures, "I think I have a temporary solution." Sloane looks at her doubtfully.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Wanna go outside and see if that creepy couple next door stopped camping out in the hot tub?"

Sloane smiles.

 

-

 

A few roadside oddities they end up stopping for, in no order:

"Sun Singer!" (fancy-schmancy name for a stupid statue)

"Confusion Park!" (the only confusing thing is how the place managed to stay open for several decades)

"World's Biggest Shoe!" (it doesn't really count if the thing is made of ceramic)

"IT!!!!!!" (a total rip-off)

"Rattlesnake Farm!" (surprisingly - _not_ a rip-off?)

What's really wild is that Jeanie knows that she wouldn't have stopped at _any_ of them, were it not for Sloane's gentle persistence. (Knows it all too well, as she spent many a summer snickering at the sucker who'd be tricked into any of those tourist traps as she and her family rode by their respective billboards on their way to the Grand Canyon.)

As someone who's resisted the charms of Ferris himself for so long, it makes Jeanie wonder: what it is about Sloane Peterson that makes it so hard to refuse her?

 

-

 

Motel Number Five is just three hours from home.

They could have made the drive fully back tonight, but something makes Jeanie reluctant to. She knows, somehow, that Sloane is, too, from the hesitant half-smile she keeps shooting Jeanie under her lashes, and pretends that the stupid way her stupid heart stutters is just food poisoning finally settling in from the greasy diner food they consumed not two hours ago.

Though there are twin beds - these, with possibly the scratchiest linens ever devised by man - they're both reclining on Jeanie's. She's pretending to watch TV (those weirdos on _Wheel of Fortune_ , losing their shit over winning a brand-new blender or microwave or something) as Sloane leans close, painting her toenails.

("You brought _nail polish_?" Jeanie had asked, amused, when the other girl shook out her vanity bag at Motel Number Two, letting rain from it twelve pastel shades that were likely gracing every in-vogue pop star's or Guess model's hands at the moment. Sloane had looked almost offended, volleying back: "You didn't?")

As it turns out, Sloane's hands brushing in gentle, bird-like strokes over Jeanie's skin as she works is far more interesting than Pat Sajak and his phony hair and phony smile, and she doesn't even realize she's been caught staring until the other girl caps the nail polish and suddenly replaces it on the dresser next to them, even though two toenails on that foot remain bare and polish-free.

"Want to?" Sloane breathes, and suddenly her own pastel nails are grazing the side of Jeanie's neck as she leans close, grinning, her smile no longer polished or elegant but almost feral.

A good thing to say might be "yes", or even " _hell_ yes", but instead, Jeanie stammers, red-cheeked, "I'm not Ferris," (stupid, _stupid_ ), and the hurt look that flashes over Sloane's face feels like a slap.

"Yeah," she says, mouth twisted ruefully, "I've been very aware of that," before tracing her fingertips over Jeanie's cheekbones and suddenly slanting her lips over hers. The kiss is soft, yet there's no hesitancy in it; only a swift and thorough evisceration of both Jeanie's mouth and sanity.

(Like she's been learning, these past few days - Sloane Peterson can be very persuasive when she wants to be.)

 

-

 

They make it back to Shermer, sans: five grocery bags, one beach chair (caught in a freak windstorm), a bottle of nail polish (kicked off the dresser and under the bed once Jeanie decided to let Sloane know that she was no slouch in the kissing department, either).

It's only been a week, yet it feels like they've come back from another planet. Yet now that they're home, she supposes she should expect things to be back to normal. They both had an-- itch to scratch, and if Sloane wants to pretend that nothing happened, Jeanie supposes the most she can do to repay her for several hours of _very_ necessary kissing is let the other girl get on with her life and forget the last twenty-four hours of insanity.

Sloane's Miata pulls into the Bueller cul-de-sac just as unceremoniously as it left it. Jeanie sighs and steps out, lugging her own solitary suitcase from the backseat (pink, battered, a relic from sixth grade).

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Sloane asks. Jeanie blinks. She only brought the one suitcase.

"No," she says to her feet. She waits for the Miata to zoom away, until she looks up and sees that not only hasn't Sloane left - she's staring at her impatiently. Oh.

 _Oh_.

Sloane's eyebrows are slanted down, mouth curved into a thin pout. It would truly be a hilarious Kodak moment if Jeanie weren't already dropping her suitcase and running to the driver's side like a goddamn dippy idiot, curling her fingers into the other girl's hair and proceeding to change her mock-outraged expression into one better described as rapture.

She waves exhuberantly at the Miata when it finally pulls out, twelve minutes later, not even hearing the door open until her father clears his throat and yanks away the Sunday paper her Reeboks are currently tracking mud onto.

She could get used to this.


End file.
